So I've decided to give Intern Tori the hellish wonderful task of sorting out all of your pictures and turning them into something beautiful. If you're interested, shoot just a single image of your gaming setup to toriAtKotaku DOTCOM. Make sure to include in the body of your email the name you want to use for the image description and what country you live in. That's it. And please, one photo only.

We'd like to get this wrapped up for next week, so if you're doing this try to get it to us soon, very soon.

Work and Play: A Peek Inside the Lives of Gamings' Greatest [Kotaku]

Fellow Denver pub Westword contacted me yesterday about my mini-obsession with that Tetris building. You know, the one that had windows broken out to form Tetris pieces.

Joel Warner was working on a story for Westword's blog about the Internet. He used the story to point out that while some people are trying to "clean up" the blogosphere, which he describes as a mess, chock full of factually questionable information, often people just don't care.

Very true. Still worth doing< I think, when it benefits your readers.

On Tuesday, Crecente posted his Tetris photo on his video game blog, Kotaku. That image looks very similar to those posted on December 3 by DenverInfill as part of a story about a new Embassy Suites tower going up on the property.

This led to yesterday being the "day of hell," says Gonzalez. About two dozen pending prints of his Tetris vandalism photo were canceled. A photo editor called to warn him about manipulating photos. He received numerous angry e-mails and calls from strangers — and a couple of death threats. Through it all, he maintains his innocence. "I didn't mess with the window panes. It does look funky, but I took the shot seven months ago. A lot changes in seven months," he says, adding he has the negatives to prove it. "The logic is, why if it's fake, would I have given him the address? And I wish he had contacted me before he put up the post."

Both Gonzalez and Crecente are amazed at the online clamor generated by their blogs . "Who cares in the end?" asks Gonzalez. "It's just getting somewhat ridiculous."

Crecente agrees. "I don't like being in position of debunking a picture. The weird thing is, who cares if he did fake it? I still think it's a neat image." - Joel Warner

Indeed, I'm actually playing around with the idea of buying a copy... if he'd sell it to me. Brian Crecente

Blog Eat Blog [Westword]

Daily Snap shot this picture (the first one up there) of a building in downtown Denver six months ago and plopped it on his site. In the photo caption he said that he noticed the building while walking around Denver at that after staring at it for a few minutes he realized that someone had broken Tetrominoes into the windows.

The pic quickly got tons of attention from lots of gaming sites. But besides people saying that it was fake, no one did anything to see if it was. So I emailed Daily Snap to find out exactly where this building was located. He told me, adding that the picture was taken months ago and that some of the glass has since been broken out and some replaced. Hmmmm, seemed oddly defensive. Also, isn't it strange that a building currently being demolished would have glass replaced?

So I headed out to the building yesterday and took my own pictures of the windows (the second up there). There certainly are some Tetris pieces up there in the glass. Two of them to be exact. If you compare my pic to Daily Snap's you'll notice that it appears in his picture that someone took vandalism that looked like it could have formed Tetris pieces and finished off the job. So, either that someone did so with photoshop or you have to buy the story that a building currently being demolished had eight tiny squares of broken glass replaced. And that those eight bits of glass were only the ones that happened to form Tetris pieces, the scores of other broken glass windows were left untouched.

Sorry, I just don't buy it. Hit the jump for more pics of the building's broken glass, strange mural and... a clean palette? Brian Crecente

Reports have been steadily trickling in since yesterday of stockpiles of Playstation 3s found sitting around in Best Buys untouched, or hardly touched.

Best Buy announced they would be selling a bunch of the consoles starting Sunday and according to several emailers, very few people took them up on their offer. Of course this is all anecdotally, so I'm not sure how widespread it is.

What I can tell you is that the Best Buy near my house had 31 Playstation 3s sitting in a lovely wall o' consoles this morning when I swung by the store. Many, if not all of them, were the 60GB model.

While taking pictures of the stack load of PS3s (and the nearby wall of Xbox 360s, twice the size) someone came buy and plucked one up. He happened to be right next to me when I was paying for my stuff and I heard him saying that the main reason he decided to get it was because it offered up games at 1080p and he wanted to see what it looked like on his plasma. It appeared he was also buying a Blu-ray movie and a copy of Madden for the system.

I can't help but wonder if this seeming lack of interest in the PS3 at Best Buys is because of a general post-holiday buying drought or something more about the system itself. It certainly doesn't look good, especially when coupled with the details were reported on last week about the PS3's grey market. Brian Crecente

Pokemon is touring the nation, color me scared. I'm not sure where all they will be going, but I know that on May 5 the furry little rodents will be landing in Denver.

The event will include a chance to get your pic taken with Pikachu, download some new pokemon to your game pack and even check out that Pokemon puzzle game for the DS.

I can't believe that Pokemon is still so tremendously popular.

Pokemon Invades Southwest Mall in May [Rocky Mountain News]

Great Tasting Fruit [Flickr, thanks Jon and sorry I'm a pig]

Well, not really, but it sure as heck looks like it.

Real Life Katamari?

Microsoft just sent me a cool little Xbox 360 gizmo in the mail. The Quick Charge Kit is a sleek white device that can charge two wireless controller battery packs simultaneously.

The thing plugs into an outlet and features little charging lights. It comes packed with one spare battery pack. Using this device, you can charge on battery in less than two hours or two batteries at the same time in less than four hours. I'm going to have to run out and buy a second spate.

I'm not sure how much this thing is going to sell for, but it looks like it's going to be very useful.

Francesco sends word of a new book heading to the states and Europe from Italy featuring a Japanese photographer s work. How s that for multicultural?

Samurai Girl by Julie Watai, 25, is a photobook about gamers, otaku culture and J-Girls and is set to hit in March. Watai, we re told, is a bit of an otaku idol herself. The singer/photographer/model was in the group Pikapika, sang the title song for Ape Escape Eyetoy, modeled for Smart Girl magazine and even did some of the prep photos for Killer 7.

Some exclusive photos from the upcoming book after the jump.

Samurai Girl [Amazon]